It’s been a little over three months since Momentum launched. We exist because something wonderful happened last summer. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party gives us a remarkable opportunity to mobilise and organise for a more democratic, equal and just society.

To achieve our aims and transform society for the better, we will continue to:

Organise in every town, city, and village to create a mass movement for real, progressive change

Make Labour a more democratic party, with the policies and collective will to implement them in government

Bring together individuals and groups in our communities and workplaces to campaign and organise on the issues that matter to us

We aspire to live in a participatory, inclusive, and democratic society, so we must build an organisation that is those things. Over the next month, we will build towards the first meeting of our National Committee on Saturday 6 February with gatherings of delegates from verified local Momentum groups in all nine English regions, Scotland and Wales.

Momentum staff members will be in touch in the coming week, to organise the regional meetings with group organisers, trade unions and other relevant stakeholders. These regional (national in the case of Wales and Scotland) meetings will elect delegates to the National Committee. In the instances of Scotland and Wales, staff members will be a point of contact as you organise your meetings and selection process independently. Each region or nation will elect two delegates, at least one of whom must be a woman. The North West and the South East will have three delegates due to their size, at least two of whom must be women. London will have four delegates, at least two of whom must be women. All delegates will be Labour Party members.

As well as elect their delegates, these regional gatherings may debate all issues on the forthcoming agenda and present their own comments, proposals or amendments. These papers will be presented to all members of the Committee.

The 26 delegates elected by the local groups at a regional/national level will be joined at the National Committee’s first meeting by additional representatives from under-represented groups in society (BAME, disability, LGBT, women). We will do everything we can so that Momentum’s National Committee represents everyone in our movement.

In addition to the groups and equalities representatives, the National Committee will have two representatives from each affiliating trade union to constitute an important alliance between trade unions and grass-roots activists in the party and 12 representatives from existing Labour movement organisations.

The National Committee will perform the following functions:

Engage with supporters to listen to what groups need to be able to organise effectively at a local level.

In consultation with local groups and supporters, ensure we have a democratic, representative, inclusive and pluralist structure that facilitates local, regional and national coordination.

Ensure that Momentum can hold free and fair elections for positions on the National Committee.

Agree a membership and affiliation structure and encourage trade union participation at local and regional as well as national level.

Secure a viable pathway for Momentum to become a financially sustainable organisation.

Ensure all the necessary organisational processes and procedures are in place.

We hope this process will solidify Momentum and stand us in good stead to be the transformative, participatory, democratic, and effective organisation that we need to be. The next few months will be particularly important, as we help to ensure that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership gets the results it deserves in May.

We currently rely entirely on crowd-sourced donations. Will you help us cover the costs of the meeting and support our activities?

5 Responses to A message from the London office

This timescale seems very accelerated – regional meetings to be arranged and to elect two delegates for a National Committee meeting to be held on February 6th. We are not at the moment a ‘verified’ group, and have no designated organiser to be contacted, though we do through some individuals have various contacts with central Momentum. Could we designate someone to act as interim delegate to attend the regional meeting? Who can contact someone at central Momentum?

I can see the logic behind the momentum to formalise Momentum, but if it’s pushed through hastily and without careful thought, it could close some doors that are currently wide open — and usefully so. For example, during the Labour leadership election, Caroline Lucas publicly floated the idea of an electoral pact with Corbyn’s Labour in the Independent:

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For those who are most concerned to win a Labour victory in 2020 — should Corbyn succeed in making it that far — then the possibility of Green candidates standing down in a large number of Labour/Tory or Labour/LibDem marginals, on the understanding that Labour candidates will stand down in 4 or 5 key Green target seats is surely something that merits serious consideration. To that end, the idea that “[a]ll delegates [to Momentum’s National Committee] will be Labour Party members” could, in fact, act to shut the door on a wider reorientation and regroupment of left forces in the face of what even Guardian editorials are now calling a Tory coup. Moreover, this aspect of the process seems to have imposed by the central office, and has not involved consultation with local groups. It seems like a capitulation to scaremongering in right-wing press about the spectre of entryism. Surely this proposal must be open to amendment, in order for the process to be properly democratic?

Some other questions: what, exactly, constitutes a verified local Momentum group? Who decides on the process of verification?

If Momentum seeks formal affiliation to Labour, surely that will then serve to preclude participation on the part of people who belong to parties of the left other than Labour, or people who, for one reason or another, remain sceptical about joining the Labour party (say, you know, if they had read that book by Ed Miliband’s father on the limits of parliamentary socialism)? To some, that will then seem like the end of the ‘Corbyn project’ to transform Labour, as initially envisaged.

Without there having been any formal electoral process thus far in any of the local groups, who can legitimately be designated as a local organiser, in order to act a point of contact for the facilitation of the regional meetings, at which the National Committee delegates will be elected?

I am interested to see the proposal that “the National Committee will have two representatives from each affiliating trade union to constitute an important alliance between trade unions and grass-roots activists in the party and 12 representatives from existing Labour movement organisations.” Will the category of “existing Labour movement organisations” include campaigning groups like the People’s Assembly, Defend the Right to Protest, Stand Up to Racism and, indeed, the Stop the War Coalition? Surely representatives from these groups ought to be given representation on the National Committee.

I spoke to someone from another group today, who felt, as I do, that this will only work if it is built out of the groundswell and not by a London based group directing the way it develops. He said that the London people are aware that this is an interim initiative. He encouraged us to focus on making the regional links and getting our delegates to the meeting on the 6th, where the questions raised can be aired and personal links made with delegates from the other regions.